The Final Joke
by AdolescentKid14
Summary: Molly Hooper is never noticed, and she likes to keep her mask up. But sometimes, she can't help but laugh. (Dark!Molly) Molly Hooper/ Jim Moriarty
1. Chapter 1

Molly Hooper wasn't noticed very often. She was the kind of girl who would hide behind ordinary, unattractive clothing, and plain hair. She tried not to wear makeup, and she tried to keep silent. It worked, no one ever considered little Molly Hooper, the girl who was scared of the living. It was ironic; really, that the only one Molly tried to show herself to was the one who cared the least.

Sherlock Holmes was always noticed. Molly liked that, he was so different from her, so much more vocal with his thoughts. His observances made her laugh when she was alone; his inability to keep it all in his mind was so funny that she could barely keep up her mask of offence when he spoke to her.

He claimed to be so superior to everyone else, and Molly laughed at his ego and his self-control. Everything was so funny when he was around. The humiliation of the people who glanced at her with such contempt and pity every day brought her a lot of satisfaction, but his complete blindness to her true nature was just too hysterical.

No one else seemed to get the joke. She told it to her dead, but they never cracked a smile, and she was sure the living would be even less receptive. She thought that she would be the only one laughing for a long time, until she met Jim.

Jim came from I.T, or so he had in the beginning. He came in directly after Sherlock had just left, and as she turned to see him, she really saw him. She saw the tell-tale signs of a gay man, but he walked differently, as if he was uncomfortable in this role. And a role it was, because as soon as he spoke she saw he was _flirting_ with her.

She couldn't hold back the laughter. She couldn't take the sudden realization that she was so invisible, and everyone else was so blind, that a man who was not who he seemed was pretending to flirt with someone she was not. It was all so convoluted, and combined with Sherlock's most recent comment about her lipstick; her most recent attempt to get him to actually _look_ at her. All he had said was about the size of her mouth, not the fact that lipstick itself was the same color as the blood in the corpse, or that his coffee was not made exactly the way he wanted, or that she had left the makeup smeared napkin underneath the cup.

Nothing escaped his notice, nothing except the subtle jokes and changes Molly made in the morgue. And now, here was a man who was trying to do the same thing, but not to her, to Sherlock, while using her, and she couldn't hold back her mirth.

"What's so funny?" Jim from I.T was asking, a nervous smile on his face, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Molly only laughed harder at that, she had long ago learned how to completely control how she was seen, and how she acted.

"You are! You all are! All of you, nobody gets the joke! I can't, I'm sorry. You're all so STUPID! It's just too funny! I wish I knew what it was like to be so blind, so _ignorant_." She couldn't continue as her giggles grew too much. Jim just stared, his hard, cold eyes staring at her with such an intensity that she had to try to contain herself.

"Are you, quite alright, Molly?" He asked nervously, though his demeanor portrayed the exact opposite emotion. He was intrigued, and maybe, just a little bit angry at her insults. She gripped the scalpel she hadn't realized she had grabbed, brought into the air.

"Oh, you know. Here among the dead, everyone goes a bit bonkers sometimes. Most just ignore me. I guess the fumes are going to my head a bit. I'll just, umm," She stuttered nervously, changing so quickly from her true self to the mousy little girl that some might get whip –lash. She blushed, noticing his small change in demeanor at her show of weakness, "What is it that you wanted?"

He smiled then, again not reaching his eyes, and said, "I'm from I.T I came to fix your computer."

"Doesn't need to be fixed." She said brightly, turning back to her corpse, slowly driving her scalpel across the cadaver's chest. She relished the slight shiver that Jim gave, knowing it was not one of fear, but of pleasure.

"You can leave now, not many people like to watch while I work." She had already determined what the cause of death was, but she continued to cut, to take apart, her lovely young man. Some called her morbid, others, just thorough. She preferred to think of it as art; perfection, reached only when things were completely taken apart, the final form. However, unlike how she accepted the actor to react, he came closer, risking his guise to breath in the smell of death.

"I'm alright. Not very squeamish. Molly, I was wondering," and the mask was back on, for both of them. She was shy and precise, not looking up, and he was nervous and flirty, and it was all so boring.

"Would you like to go out for coffee later?" He smiled as he said this, it reached his eyes, and she looked up in shock. He had gotten the joke. He had _seen_. Maybe not everything, but he saw something, and that was more than anyone had ever seen.

"I'd love to. What should I wear?" He whispered something about red, and she laughed, harder than she had ever laughed. Someone got the joke, someone had seen her, seen part of her, and it was wonderful. He smiled, his mask broken, and she gasped as he held out his hand, taking her blood-covered one, "No time like the present, dearie." And his nervous voice was gone, in its place was a tilting, Irish accent, his tone scary, and insane and horrible _funny._


	2. Chapter 2

**-Hey, I wasn't going to continue this story, but someone asked me to, so I figured, Who am I to say no?**

**Also, I'm flattered. So here you go, more Dark! Molly**

Jim from I.T led Molly out of the morgue, helping her take her lab coat off, but leaving the drying blood on her hands. He held the stained fingers gingerly and he walked ahead of her, towards the south side of the city. She should have felt fear, but she couldn't stop her laughter anymore. A few thoughts flickered through her racing mind that she was perhaps behaving in a way that contrasted greatly with sane, mousy little Molly, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

"So, my little pathologist, what's so funny?" The Irish lilt was in full force now, and 'Jim' spoke with almost a sing song voice as he pulled her into a small doorway, shaded over and unseen from the road. She found herself ducking into a rundown flat, with bits of finery strung around as if a rich man had tried to live as a beggar and didn't quite make it.

She forced her voice to stay calm and steady, repressing her laughter enough to answer.

"You are. I told you already. You're so stupid. You and Sherlock both, God, you're already repeating questions." She lost her look of giddy laughter and suddenly had the most passive and blank face that Moriarty stepped back ever so slightly.

"If you're going to be this boring, I'll find other supposed geniuses to play my games with." She said as leant against the wall, her stupid cardigan ripping as it was caught on a hook near to her head. She ignored it, and stared steadfastly at Moriarty as he processed this information.

He was suddenly way too close, and she could almost smell his anger as his eyes rolled over her, his attempts at trying to be more powerful in this situation nearly reducing her to laughter once again.

"I think you'll find I'm less than boring. I'm unpredictable, I'm a good old-fashioned villain, I'm Sherlock's mind, _I_ am Moriarty."

Molly simply leaned in closer, so that he could feel her breath against his neck, she angled her head so she could speak even closer to his face, and said in a falsetto, letting her words ghost around his ear,

"YOU are _boring._" She pulled back before he could grab her chin, and smirked as he growled at her. She twisted her cardigan out of the hook's grasp, simultaneously moving away from the infuriated man in front of her.

"All of your games, we know the players, we know the acts, we know the aim, the tricks! They are all so dull, so ordinary. Sure, you claim that they're not because they're bigger than what an ordinary person would play, games where all the variables are already known, everything is already solved. It's mimicry of ordinary people's intrigues, their daily lives, and all a great big game that means NOTHING!" She spun so quickly on her heel that Moriarty was taken aback; her frame beneath the mountains of clothing must be smaller and more agile than he had first believed. His rage boiled beneath his skin and he could feel his fingers flicking over the knife in his pocket, a small cut beginning to form on the index finger.

"Oh, a knife, how _grand._" Molly pouted, now on the other side of Moriarty, leaning against a table that was covered in dust, her arms holding her up, still covered in the now brown, drying blood. She scoffed and stretched, pulling her ripped and dirty cardigan off, revealing a tight button-up shirt underneath. She laid the cardigan down onto the table, and sighed leaning back once more.

"You really are inventive, my dear. How novel, to be knifed in a back alleyway, the poor defenseless woman." She barked a laugh then, so harsh and so loud that Moriarty's fingers gripped the knife, and he hissed as he felt the blade dig into his skin.

"If you were going to kill me, you wouldn't let me keep talking. That was a bluff earlier," She crossed the room, apparently unable to keep still. "The one about finding someone more entertaining. There's nothing more entertaining than you two clowns, acting out their version of the great play, like in Shakespeare's time. I've yet to meet a proper actor, you're all I've got, so _please_ try not to be boring." She turned back to him, a pleading look in her eyes.

Moriarty closed the space between them grabbing her arms and pinning her to him, his knife held in his left hand, lightly grazing her cheek,

"I shall try not to disappoint my dear."


	3. Chapter 3

**-Hey, Probably going to be the last installment in this story, but I will definitely write more Dark! Molly. Tell me what you think of this by reviewing.**

_"You know how this ends, don't you?" Molly washed her hands slowly, knowing that Moriarty had installed cameras everywhere. She took care that she leaned her head towards it, so that he picked up her whispering voice._

_She heard a small clicking noise as the camera readjusted unnecessarily, and took it as him entering the conversation._

"_You two, you two lose, and I, the one who was always playing, but never played, win. It's how all of this works; the criminal and the detective even each other out and the pathologist is left with the scraps. I hope that you at least have fun." She sighed and wiped her hands, now immaculate, on a paper towel, before lightly tossing it over the camera and walking out, the cameras frantic clicking echoing the sound of her heels on the linoleum._

Jim Moriarty sat on a rooftop, waiting for his only almost-equal in the entire world to come and play – _no_ -to come and do battle. He regretted using the word play in his text to Sherlock; Molly would already be smirking. The girl scared him.

She could have easily deceived him as she had deceived the Great Sherlock Holmes, but she didn't. She let him see a part of her true self, and it worried his mind. It made no sense, none whatsoever, and he cringed at his inability to grasp her intentions.

He shuddered at the idea of her actually playing him for a fool, and this whole intelligent, bored demeanor was just a disguise, set up by someone of far greater intellect than him. This is what nightmares and dreams are made of, he decided, the stuff that sets your blood afire even as it chills your soul.

"I should have been a poet." He thought smirking slightly as Sherlock entered onto the roof.

Molly hummed slightly as she watched Sherlock's look of terror as he dove off of the building. They had put in place a fail-safe, a plan so that he wouldn't die.

But she hadn't done her part. Little Mousy Molly let Sherlock see Miss Hooper as he fell, his eyes staring directly into the shop window where she said she would be, and she laughed at his stupid expression when his head hit the concrete.

Jim Moriarty, however, was more difficult to get rid of. She saw him stand slowly, tucking the gun into his jacket pocket before opening the door to go back down the stairs. As he turned away from her, she lined up her sights, letting out a satisfied mewl as his form instantly crumpled when the bullet pierced his skull.

She lifted herself from her crouching position, toe lightly nudging the corpse of the man who had been holding the sniper's rifle before her.

She danced down the stairs into the street, singing softly, and thinking of those still alive; all of them a bit more boring than the last two, but maybe just a little entertaining, something to keep her alive for a few more months or so.

_The lights in the morgue shone brightly as Lestrade left a tear stricken Molly alone with the corpses of the two men Mousy Molly had ever pretended to like._

_As he left she suddenly straightened, and her tears dried as she walked over from her sitting position, eager to begin the ending of her great game. She reached _

_She drew her hand down the face of Moriarty, the same place he had placed his knife in their first conversation, noting that he had a nice clean hole in his forehead where her bullet had entered his skull. _

_She glanced over at Sherlock's broken body with the same casual disdain with which he had looked her so many times over before picking up her scalpel, running an ebony digit over its sharp edge, nearly drawing blood._

_She thought of the nights with Jim from IT, where Mousy Molly played slightly dumb or scared and confused the Master Mind, feeding his ever-growing theory that she was acting, that her script was written by a far superior power. _

_She had played it up just enough that she knew in his final moments there on the rooftop, he would question the very existence of Miss Molly Hooper._

"_I told you I'd win sweetheart. Your game was a bit silly, and I'm almost glad it's over. Almost. Oh well," Molly brought her scalpel up into the light so she could see how it shone when it was so clean and unused, "Best begin this final act, eh?" _

_She looked down at the men who had always condescended, always laughed at her, always told her what to do, and she smiled, a smile so sincere that it would cause a corpse to shiver._

"_Tell me, does genius show in the blood?"_


End file.
